The Crash Course on Life: Strife
by MistyWing
Summary: Life is never easy when you’ve got decisions to make and... A baby... BOOK 2 of the TCCOL Trilogy.
1. Chapter 1

Getting started was the easy part. Getting it to keep rolling has been an unbelievable feat. I never thought I could make Tomoyo's life this complicated, but now that I have I guess it's safe to say this story is running along just fine. Her story will be shorter than Syaoran and Sakura's story, since she is only one person instead of two. Focus is all on her and not Eriol. Halt, did everyone hear me alright? That's right people! Eriol is in it. All these characters are connected in some way and I'm going to show you in three tales. You do not have to read the other two books to make sense of this girl's life.

_The Crash Course on Life: Strife _

**Summary: History repeats itself when Tomoyo Daidouji decides to find her father against her mother's will. Sonomi Daidouji had created a contentious environment for her daughter since the day she was born. Life is never easy when you've got decisions to make and… A baby… **

**Disclaimer: The only thing I have to show for ownership is a couple of forged Clow Cards I bought at Toys R' Us 5 years ago**. **Card Captor Sakura is in the ownership of the rightful people, CLAMP.**

1. Sonomi Eyes

Akinaga showed no mercy to his mother. The birth was like a punishment to them because Akinaga was an accident after all. Poor Akinaga born the exact same way his mother was born. He was like Eros himself, a beauty among babies, except he had midnight curls and cerulean eyes. No matter how beautiful he was though, his situation was just the same. He was fatherless. All the pain that his mother had to endure before his birth, he slammed her tenfold during labor.

Yet, as Sonomi Daidouji stared at her infant grandson in his incased crib she felt a pinch of pride and welling of joy in her bosom. She never thought that after all mother and daughter's combined misfortunes, she would be lucky enough to be a grandmother. Her daughter accepting everything, just as she had to accept everything, was the only wrong Sonomi had done in raising her daughter. Tomoyo should not be the single parent that she was. Sonomi hadn't a clue who the baby's biological father was and Tomoyo, still in her room of the maternity ward never mentioned his name.

"Oh, Aki. Welcome to the real world," Sonomi whispered to the baby. Her moist breath left a fog across the glass. "I hope Tomo will give you the life that I couldn't give her."

The life she meant for Tomoyo was a lost hope. She had wanted for her daughter to have a decent and supportive father even if he could not be there for her. However the man she had Tomoyo with was a subliminal, venomous wretch, who ended up hurting Tomoyo and leaving her in the hospital with a baby. If he had anything to do with Aki, Sonomi swore she would have him castrated.

Nine months ago she had warned Tomoyo about the man, but Tomoyo strongly opposed her. Gentle, sweet, and gracious Tomoyo ignored every word of warning her mother conceived to go off to Great Britain to find her father.

Sonomi put up with a load of rubbish from her daughter over eighteen years. First off, the girl had decided to be a film director when Sonomi had a modeling career all planned out for her. Then, on her sixteenth birthday, Tomoyo admitted that she had never been straight, which she found out at ten-years-old. Drifting further and further away from her, Sonomi had wondered in agony what had happened to the girl she knew; the one who always sketched pictures of them together with her red crayons; the girl, who loved dressing up and posing in front of cameras during the day or posing in front of the vanity during the night; the girl who thought that "board game night" with just the two of them was the best time of the day; the girl, who sang better than those fairytale princesses in those Disney Movies. Even when Tomoyo had disappeared for over nine months, Sonomi stayed up late just agonizing over what had ever happened to Tomoyo.

Now, that she was home, or partway home, since they were both still in the hospital exactly one day after labor, Sonomi stopped wondering even though there were much more unanswered questions than before Tomoyo left. Those questions ceased to exist as of now. It was as if a pipeline to her thoughts and fashion were being clogged up by a glop of hopelessness.

In this lifetime Sonomi had already been four characters; hypercritical daughter, imprudent friend, wanton woman, and blind mother. Staring at her hands and the blue lines crisscrossing beneath the translucent flesh, she saw her life in those lines. Each line was her life. How she truly wished she had known how to read those lines before it came down to this.

Sonomi placed her withering hand against the glass. "I don't deserve you, Aki," she whispered to the baby.

The nurse on shift clucked. "Shhhh… There, there." She picked the baby out of the bed and placed him into Sonomi's arms. This was Sonomi's first time holding the baby, since he was born. She hadn't even touched him until now. "Congratulations, Grandma," said the nurse as she left Sonomi alone with the infant.

Two minutes later the nurse returned with a vase of flowers. "These were for your daughter, but you know, Akinaga probably wants some in here, too."

Sonomi hadn't moved at all from her position by the bed. She could not move when her body felt like lead.

The nurse smiled. "He was born on a special day. Do you know what day yesterday was?"

"No," Sonomi whispered, fatigue edging crisply with her answer

"White Day."

It all made sense. A hot, white splice through her head reminded her of the words that Tomoyo said to her after Akinaga's birth: "This is my gift to you for the hours."

Sonomi had thought Tomoyo had meant hours at her bedside when she was about to give birth, but no that was not what she meant. It was something more.

Sonomi went into the next room with Akinaga sleeping in her arms. Tomoyo rested in bed, her ashen hands across her belly. Her pale, pink lips were wordless.

"Tomo, Aki's here."

Tomoyo's eyes fluttered open, revealing feverish amethysts. In those eyes Sonomi saw the hours that the new mother would put aside for her son. Age did wonders on Sonomi's senses. Too bad, she could not have perceived earlier all the pain that Tomoyo would have to go through before ending up with Akinaga Daidouji—something. He had a long, elegant, name that was a pleasure to let peel across one's tongue, but Sonomi did not know it all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay, before I go on with the thank yous and so on, I want to wish everyone happy holidays. The setting I have chosen for this story is basically strewn from the kind of weather that I've been getting where I live. It's been very wintry up here and the sun is only up for four hours before it sinks away again. I have completed my finals, so I'm back at my computer again (whenever I'm bored out of my mind). I will be finishing old fics and starting new ones between now and the beginning of my Spring 08 semester. Thank you everyone, who has taken the time to read and review my second book of **_**The Crash Course on Life**_**. I look forward to someday completing this piece as well. I have a goal to start the third book in May, but you know, things happen and I am forced to slack off for other reasons. Well, I hope you enjoy this new installment. Be sure to review and let me know what you're thinking. Support is much appreciated.**

_The Crash Course on Life: Strife_

2. Break Away (Before Akinaga)

"Mom, I'm going to Britain."

Sonomi sputtered the lukewarm coffee she was about to swallow. She snatched the napkin out of the hand of her daughter. Tomoyo flinched, yet continued to keep her composure as best she could. It was hard seeing her mother stressed like this, but what could she do when she really needed to break away from it all?

Ever since, Sakura left for the States, Tomoyo had lost all intrigue in life and sometimes fell into a deep moping period during the day. She went to seek professional help from a psychologist, who told her that she was not depressed. It was the same psychologist, who told her that the disappearance of her best friend was only the removed roadblock to the real problem. It was not depression that Tomoyo was going through, therefore he could not provide her with the drugs for depression, but something called hysteria that was usually the affect of thought suppressions. That was when she and the doctor knew that Great Britain was the only cure.

"Everything's all set. My grade school teacher has offered to take me in for as long as I want to stay there, so you don't have to worry about me being mobbed at a hotel."

Sonomi coughed some more to clear her burning throat.

"I need to do this to get rid of the hysteria."

"The what?" Her mother managed to ask

Tomoyo handed her the diagnosis that the doctor had written up for her. Fancy little things doctors do to get another couple of hundred yen in their pouches.

"What kind of quack wrote this up?"

"He's the real deal, Mom. Because of him I know what's wrong and I know what to do," she said in her sweet, bell-like voice, hiding her real incentive, which was to find and know the father that her mother had hidden from her for so many years.

"Okay, but this isn't really a trip for relaxation and an opening of suppressive thoughts, is it?"

"Doctor Emiya and I talked about this. I'm going to see my father."

"You're talking to me right now, not Quack Emiya. What makes you think it's your father that's the cause of this."

Tomoyo rolled her eyes, which was unbecoming of her. "I've always had something else on my mind to occupy myself. After all that has happened, it's clear that I have been putting up a barrier against the man I truly want to meet. You and Sakura both kept my thoughts of him at bay, but something happened when Sakura left. I must meet him now."

"Permission not granted."

"I'm not asking for your permission."

Sonomi's eyebrows rose at her daughter's defiance rippling out to scratch the surface of their conversation.

"Excuse me?"

"You still hold a grudge against me because I didn't want to be a fashion model. And don't think for another minute that I don't see the enmity you have for lesbians."

"Do not use that inappropriate word at the table," she hissed. Sonomi took another sip from her mug and glared coldly. "Nadeshiko was not—"

"I'm not Nadeshiko and I'm not straight! I'm sorry I couldn't be the perfect something for you, but my flaws has nothing to do with me and my father."

The coffee sloshed across Sonomi's fingers and dripped down her long crimson nails as she trembled in fury. "You're spouting words that are contrary to my feelings! If it's your father you want to see then go see him! Don't take your hysteria and ram it into me."

Tomoyo turned her head away.

"But don't think I'm going to help you find him because I'm not. This time you're on your own."

Sonomi got up from her chair and went off to work, leaving Tomoyo as lost as ever.

"Don't worry. I'll get out of pinches on my own," Tomoyo whispered to herself.

Her suitcase was snapped shut and the robotic voice announcing the departure of her flight thrummed in her eardrums.


End file.
